


Reading Faces

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, I saw the promo pics and I HAVE FEELINGS, season 4 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12191439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: When she asked him to let her go, Caitlin had known she would see Cisco again. He's always come after her before.(She's terrified that this is the time he won't.)





	Reading Faces

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Killervibe Weekend, Season 4 Speculation day

When Caitlin walked in the staff door, the afternoon bartender was in the stock room, pulling down a case of Dos Equis for the cooler out front. “Hey,” Allie said, glancing up. “You’ve got an admirer waiting for you.”

“You’d think after what happened when he groped my ass, jean-jacket guy would steer clear,” Caitlin said absently, heading for the timeclock. She paused and frowned at Allie. “You didn’t tell him I’d be working today, did you?” They had pretty strict rules about telling people their schedules, because that was how a female bartender got stalkers. She wasn’t in the mood to scare someone off today.

“Not jean-jacket guy," Allie said. "Long-haired dude at the end of the bar. He came in half an hour ago asking for you.”

Caitlin's hand went rigid over the timeclock. "Wh-what did you tell him?"

Allie shrugged. “I said maybe you’d be around later, and he said he’d wait.” She flipped a bar towel over her shoulder. “Do me a favor, would you? Don’t break his pinky. He tips real good.”

Of course he did.

She walked out to the front of house and spotted Cisco right away, perched on a stool at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. A bowl that had held bar mix sat empty in front of him.

She stood in the shadows a moment, soaking him in. His hair was longer, falling in curls to his shoulders. He didn’t have any visible bruises, and he sat on the stool easily, without any stiffness that might indicate he was in pain from the epic throwdown on the docks a few nights ago.

(She’d really just seen it mentioned in passing, online, browsing her phone during her break. She wasn’t keeping tabs on them. She wasn’t.)

He looked - older. Not in a bad way. More certain of himself, more certain of his place in the world.

With a pang, she wondered if all he’d ever needed was for her to leave.

He looked up and his gaze unerringly found her.

She felt pinned to the floor, sick with dread. His face, usually so expressive, was a calm mask of nothingness. He didn’t look happy or sad or angry or … anything, really.

But he’d come here.

He tilted his glass. “Hey there. I could use a refill.”

She stalked across the back of the bar, her boots sticking to the floor in a few spots. Allie must have spilled again. “You got a tab?” she asked - the first words she’d said to him since _let me go_ , under a tree in a cemetery, six months ago.

“Yep.”

She pulled another beer - Tecate, she knew without asking - and plonked it in front of him, then turned to the register to add the drink to his tab.

“Great service here,” he commented. “So warm and friendly.”

He probably hadn’t meant warm in that way - probably. But all the same, it jabbed at something in her chest. She turned to him and crossed her arms. “What do you want?”

“Hi,” he said. “How are you doing? Oh, just fine. Thanks for asking.”

“You’re here to drag me back.”

“Maybe I came by to catch up with an old friend.” He looked her up and down. “You got a new look. It’s … interesting.”

She snorted. “You’re here to drag me back because it’s what you do. After Ronnie died, you came to my apartment with your whole sob story about Wells and the coma guy, and how much they needed a doctor. After the singularity, you came to Mercury Labs with your weird drained ID card story. You even tried to drag me back - “ She bit her own tongue, hard, and felt blood flood her mouth.

From the look on his face, he knew what she was stopping herself from saying.

Her memories of her time as Killer Frost were foggy. Mostly, she remembered how free she’d felt. She’d been loose, wild, unshackled from the chains of caring about anyone or anything.

And a small, hideous part of her missed it even now.

Clearer memories surfaced sometimes, with a sound or a smell. She remembered attacking her friends. She remembered taking Iris (who she thought was Iris) to be murdered. She remembered HR dying.

She wished she could erase all of it. Wipe it away, wipe Killer Frost away, wipe Caitlin Snow away. She wished she could be a person who’d never known or hurt any of them.

But she remembered Cisco. His face when she’d attacked them in the pipeline before escaping Star Labs like she should have done years ago. His face when he’d faced her down in Tracy Brand’s lab. His face when she’d said she never loved any of them. Devastated, longing, disbelieving.

His face when he’d thrown the cure at her feet, that last night in the forest. That time, his expression had been different. Sometimes she thought it had been anger. Sometimes, she thought it had been contempt.

(A relationship can survive anything but contempt, she’d read once, and the words gnawed at her now, like the eagle gnawing at Prometheus’s vitals.)

He swirled his beer in the glass. A little sploshed over onto his hand. “It’s been six months since you walked away from Star Labs,“ he said to his hand as he wiped it clean with a bar napkin. "I’ve left you alone like you asked.”

She grabbed the empty bowl in front of him and dumped the crumbs into the trash before pouring it full of bar mix again. She slapped it down. "And now you’re back. Let me guess. Barry needs help.”

His eyes flickered, and she nodded, moving down the bar to refill more of the bowls. Allie had a bad tendency to let them get empty by the end of her shift, because she knew it was one of the first things Caitlin did. “It’s always Barry first, isn’t it? Your word is good only so long as Barry’s not involved.”

“No,” he said. “I know what you think, and I’m not having that fight right now.”

“He hung up his cowl after Savitar, didn’t he? Settled down to happily-ever-after, turned over the mantle of protector to you and Kid Flash?” _You’re doing a good job,_ she wanted to say, and didn’t. “What does he need now?”

Cisco poked at the bar mix, picking out several of the little honey-flavored twists. “He went into the speed force the night of H.R.s funeral. To protect us all.”

The plastic of the bar mix canister crumpled briefly under her fingers.

That night? The same night she'd -

“Of course,” she said, carefully loosening her grip. “Of course he did. That sounds just like him.” She made herself set the canister down and screw the lid on, even though she hadn’t filled all the bowls yet.

She leaned against the bar sink, staring across the room at the light-up beer ad with the naked pinup girl. Once upon a time, she would have fought to get it taken down. Now, it was wallpaper.

Barry had been in the Speed Force all this time and she hadn’t known.

Oh, god, Iris.

Maybe she should -

What was she thinking? She was the last person Iris would want commiseration from right now.

Slowly, as if the words were wrenched out of him, Cisco said, “We need Barry back because Vibe and Kid Flash aren’t doing it, okay? We’re holding this city together with string, and it’s fraying faster by the day. Central City needs the Flash, and you can help us get him back.“

When she didn’t say anything, he snapped, "Last time I checked, this was your home, too.”

She snapped back, “And don’t you think I’ve done enough damage to it?” _To you?_

“We need you,” he said. “Just help us this one time.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

He let out a low, exasperated grunt. “Poor baby, all alone in your turtle shell, and here’s mean old me trying to get you back out into the world again. God, I’m a monster.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “I am. Remember?”

His face contorted with a mix of emotions, too much and too fast for her to parse out.

He didn’t contradict her.

She turned away. “Drink your beer and get out.”

At the other end of the bar, someone hailed her. She went and took an order for a round of shots. The vodka they wanted was at the end of the bar near Cisco. She set up the tray and poured them out, avoiding his gaze.

He waited until she’d delivered the tray and was wiping down the bar to say, “So you’re not coming back?”

“I can’t imagine anyone’s a fan of the idea,“ she said, scrubbing at the gummy splotch where someone must have left the soda gun. It dripped no matter what anybody did about it. "Did you bring backup? Did you tell anybody where you were going? What if I turned you into a popsicle?”

He ignored that. "So you’d rather stay here, working a shitty job and looking like an extra from Coyote Ugly?”

She slid him a dark look. Clearly, he’d never dressed for tips. It was amazing how fast your high-minded ideals about sexualization and objectification eroded when you had to make rent. “For a guy who runs around in head-to-toe leather as much as you do, I don’t see how you have anything to say about my new look.”

"You’re not denying it’s a shitty job.”

“This is about all I’m qualified to do.” She straightened liquor bottles on the shelf, front-facing them, checking the pour spouts for tightness. Her third night, a loose pour spout had popped off and dumped most of a bottle of Captain Morgan down her front. She'd had to go home and change, and between that and paying for the bottle, she'd lost a good percentage of her first paycheck.

“You’re a literal doctor.”

“I was never board-certified, remember? I never had any business treating any of you.” Maybe it would have been better if she never had.

“Still, this gig is like the anti-Caitlin. You’re serving assholes and working crazy hours. Are you punishing yourself?”

“I’m used to working crazy hours, and this place offered me a job with very little experience.”

And she’d gotten knocked down several more pegs, learning how to do it. She’d thought she was all the way down at the bottom but she’d found deeper, somehow.

"You could have gone back to Mercury Labs.”

“I quit Mercury Labs, remember?” _For you,_ she didn’t say. _Because you came with your puppy eyes and your tantalizing mystery and I couldn’t resist and you knew it._

“Like they wouldn’t take you back.”

She went back to wiping down the bar, even though it still gleamed wetly from her last pass. “My life and my choices are none of your business.”

He stood up. He hadn’t touched his refilled drink. “I left you alone because you asked me to,” he said. “Like I did all the other times.”

She slapped the washcloth onto the bar and spun to face him. “Until Barry needed help. Like all the other times.”

“No. Until I had a good enough reason to come see you.”

Their eyes held. It was too dim in here to read the expression in his. Or maybe she didn’t want to.

He said, “Tell me to leave you alone.”

She opened her mouth. The words snarled her tongue.

He waited ten seconds, thirty, a minute. Then his shoulders and his mouth softened. Relief? She didn’t know. “You know where to find us,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“Sure,” he said, turning to go. He took three steps toward the door.

“Cisco,” she said.

He turned around, fast.

“You need to close out your tab.”

“Oh,” he said, his exit ruined.

She avoided his eyes while she printed out his receipt.

She could have covered it, actually, but he was here for another few seconds as he took it from her and pulled a pen out of his pocket. She stared at the one long curl that fell out from behind his ear as he bent his head to sign the receipt.

_I do miss Star Labs. I miss being part of something. I miss being in your life. I miss being your friend. I miss you._

She didn’t say any of that. Instead, she said, awkwardly, “How - How’s it going with Cindy?”

His head popped up. Surprise flickered across his face. “How do you know about that?”

“She showed up from another dimension to rescue you when I tried to kill you,” she said very evenly. “And she’s been in Central City a few times since then. Helping out. I figured there had to be something there.”

“It’s going okay,” he said after a long moment. “Good, actually. Long distance is hard, but I think we’re making it work.”

Months ago, before Killer Frost, she would have asked another question or two, and they would have ended up talking it out for hours. But she didn’t have that right anymore. “Good,” she said instead.

He handed the receipt back, took a five out of his wallet, and tucked it in the tip jar. This early on a Tuesday evening, it was the biggest denomination in there. She immediately resolved to give it to Allie.

She didn’t watch him go. She could at least tell herself that.

For the rest of her shift, she mixed drinks and poured pitchers, filled bowls of bar mix and fended off come-ons, and pored over every moment, every blink, every twist of his mouth.

It was only as she was walking home early in the morning that she thought of the one expression she hadn’t seen on his face -

Contempt.

FINIS


End file.
